Fishing equipment has improved considerably over the last one hundred years beginning with the invention of William Shakespeare in 1896 of the level wind reel with a guide mechanism that traverses back and forth across the spool as the reel is revolve.
The problem with the Shakespeare reel and other prior reels in which casting was effected directly from a reel spool is that a relatively long rod is required and a relatively heavy casting weight is also required to set the reel in motion. Unless very skillfully controlled throughout the casting operation, the reel inertia causes the line speed adjacent the reel to overtake the already payed-out line resulting in line tangling.
In an effort to eliminate or minimize the casting inertia problem caused by initial efforts in the design of casting reels, spinning reels were developed shortly after the turn of the twentiety century which employed fixed spools upon which the line was wound. In these reels the spools remain stationary and the line is wound around the spool by a bail or flyer. This enables the reels to cast very light bait with a somewhat shorter rod than was required in earlier developed reels. In these original spinning reels, the spool is semi-exposed along with the bail assembly so that the line exiting or entering the reel partakes a helical movement. During casting the bail is released from the line and the line slips freely from the stationary spool during casting. After casting the bail is usually reengaged by movement of the reel crank as pay-in or lure retrieval is initiated.
This original spinning-reel was subsequently improved in the advent of the spin-casting reel in which the spool is enclosed by an outer casing having a central hole through which the line extends toward the rod guides. The outer casing eliminates the helical movement of the line forwardly of the reel as in the original spinning reel. Instead of the bail assembly for winding the line on the stationary spool during pay-in, the spin-casting reel is provided with a revolving pick-up cup surrounding the spool rotated by the crank, that has a pick-up pin for grasping the line when pay-in is initiated by crank manipulation.
The spin-casting rod is somewhat shorter than other fishing rods and includes a rear handgrip and a forward handgrip between which is located a straight reel seat. A plurality of guides are provided spaced along the rod including a butt guide near the handgrip, intermediate guides and a "tip top" guide at the distal end of the rod.
When using spinning rods or spin-casting rods, it is common for the sportsman to attempt to improve the attractiveness of the lure, usually a light lure, to the fish by imparting a jerking movement to the rod so that the lure moves forward in rapid spurts in a more lifelike fashion to the animal that the lure stimulates. This lure jerking is particularly desirable in relatively calm waters where the lure is not moved under the influence of water chop.
Even very experienced fishermen have found it difficult to develop any great agility at rod jerking and therefore there have been attempts in the past to provide devices which try to impart intermittent movement to the line and lure, although none have attained a great deal of popularity of the fishermen's market. One attempt to provide the intermittent lure movement is shown in the Wilson U.S. Pat. No. 2,799,112 in which a short pivotal lever is mounted adjacent to the rod handgrip, which bends the entire fishing rod imparting the desired intermittent movement to the main fishing line extending through the tiptop guide. The Wilson device has not achieved any significant degree of success because the jerking line is as long as the length of the entire rod and more importantly because the amount of jerking is minimal with this construction.
Another attempt at effecting lure jerking is shown in the "Line-Jiggling Attachment" patent of Filut, U.S. Pat. No. 2,783,576. Filut provides a mechanical watch type spiral spring ratchet mechanism mounted on the rod opposite the reel that has a relatively short pivot arm with a hole in its weighted end through which line from the reel is threaded before passing through the butt guide on his casting rod. The Filut line-jiggling attachment is not only too complicated, but it projects so far from the rod that it makes rod manipulation very difficult, and furthermore because of the pivot arm position on the rod side opposite the reel, line threaded through the jiggler extends transversely to the axis of the rod which inhibits free line pay-out during casting. Moreover, the Filut jiggling arm is so short that no significant degree of jiggling can be achieved.
A somewhat improved line jiggler is shown in the Mercer U.S. Pat. No. 3,603,018 wherein a thumb actuated lever carries a projection transverse to the rod that selectively extends in the path of line being payed-in from an open faced spinning reel. Since line being payed-in across the bail of an open faced spinning reel partakes a helical motion, the line engages the projection once each revolution of the bail accelerating the line pay-in in intermittent fashion. While the Mercer line jerking assembly is a significant improvement over earlier attempts because of its relative simplicity, it still has some significant disadvantages--one, it is only usable with an open faced spinning reel and cannot be used with a closed faced spin casting reel, and two, the amount of lure and line acceleration is limited and in fact fixed by the radius of the bail assembly since the line once caught on the jerking projection falls off of that projection once the bail is moved 180 degrees, or slightly longer, regardless of the length of the jerking projection.
Other unsuccessful attempts have been made at providing line and lure jerking including the rod oscillating assembly shown in the Ruppa U.S. Pat. No. 3,499,241 and the cumbersome motor and battery driven line jerking device shown in the Yankaitis U.S. Pat. No. 3,789,534.
It is a primary object of the present invention to ameliorate the problems noted above in line and lure jerking assemblies for fishing rod and reel assemblies and particularly for spin-casting rod and reel assemblies.